Homeworld: Those Forgotten
by ShadowDragon8685
Summary: What about those who were forgotten? Or rather, the one forgotten? Please read it an' tell me what you think!
1. What becomes of a Fleet Command

Homeworld: Those Forgotten 

Hiigaran year 1. 

One and a half years after the refounding of Hiigara… 

What happened to those forgotten? Certainly, there was a new place in society for all the brave fighters, the determined corvette crews and the courageous capitol ship pilots. All those responsible for maintaining ships… But one. 

The cloaked woman – barely a woman, really, hardly over her twenty-second or third year of life, moved quietly through the marketplace.   
"Hey Sala. How're you doing?"   
The girl smiled at the aged vendor who was hawking her food and trinkets. "I'm okay, Telia. Just kind of… Tired. You know?"   
The old lady smiled softly. "I do indeed. Here. Take this and cheer up." The old lady tossed her a juicy fruit, which she fumbled for, but caught without letting it hit the ground. "Thanks."   
The girl sighed softly, looking up at the pre-dawn sky. And felt a tug, a longing. She didn't feel comfortable on the ground, anymore. She didn't know why, but… She shook her head, and walked through the market, eating her apple and putting the core into a waste bin. She looked around, and shook her head, walking towards her home. 

Hiigara was fairly empty these days. The avenging Hiigarans had, truth be told, wrought a few… unpleasentnesses on the previous occupants. The murders were fairly minimal, but it sickened the hearts of those who could feel compassion for innocent Imperial Taiidani citizens. Most had been kicked off the planet, and those who refused to leave were forced onto one micro-continent in the southern sea. 

"Sala Soban… What, praytell, are you doing heading towards your apartment, when it's not even dawn yet?"   
The girl looked up from under her cloak, shaking her head. "Is it any of your business, Taro Sjet?"   
The young boy – younger than she, actually, looking around eighteen or nineteen years, smiled. "Of course it is. We're friends, right?"   
She sighed softly, shaking her head. "Yeah, I guess we are. I just don't feel right… Okay?"   
He shook his head. "No, it's not. What's not to feel good about?"   
She looked into his eyes, and shook her head. "You were asleep… You didn't see anything between going to sleep on Kharak, and waking up here."   
He shot her a bemused grin. "Really? And you saw, what… The inside of a cryo pod?"   
Blink… Beat… Blink… Beat… Her eyes and heart raced, a flicker in her eyes. She'd forgotten she was supposed to have been asleep too… She turned quickly from her friend, dashing through the streets, and sliding through an alley towards her apartment complex.   
Dashing through the lobby, she keyed the elevator to her floor, and didn't stop to allow herself the luxury of hyperventilating until she was safe, locked into her bedroom. 

Closing her eyes, she shivered slightly. "That was way too close… WAY too close…"   
Sliding the cloak off, she stretched, still shaky, and quickly poured and drank a glass of water.   
She chucked nervously to herself, "You're slipping, Karan…"   
She closed her eyes, forcing her body and mind to calm down, then she looked out the window to the stars.   
"I can't stand it here… Something's… missing."   
She shook her head, then yelped, dropping the thankfully shatterproof glass on the floor, when the door announcer rang.   
"H-h-hold on. I'm coming."   
She quickly put the glass in the washer, then walked to the door, opening it. "Oh… Taro?"   
He drilled her eyes with a stare. "What was the deal, runnin' like you'd seen a big bad Taiidan?"   
She drilled her eyes back at his. "It's… None of your business… Please… Just go, okay?"   
His arm snaked through the doorway before she could shut the door. He pushed it open, and drilled his eyes again at her. "What's wrong? Really… You're off, you've been off the last few weeks…"   
She looked at him, and shook her head. "N-no, really… I… Oh please… Just leave?"   
Taro shook his head. "I don't think so, Sala. You're my friend, right? Friends don't let friends hang high and dry… What's wrong?"   
She shook her head, then sighed, shaking it again, slower.   
"I. I… I can't say. Please…"   
Sala shook her head, and pushed him back. "No. Please… I can't. I'm sorry…" She shut the door quickly, then coded it locked, and to not notify her of the announcer being pressed… 

……… 

"Damnit… What's Sala's problem… Is she afraid? Of what?"   
Taro Sjet sighed, pacing his home. "And why does she seem so damn familiar, in a way that I don't know?"   
He shook his head, and considered going to play some games or music, then collapsed on a luxurious sofa in his apartment's main room.   
"It seems so weird… What did she mean, anyway…"   
He shook his head. "What did she mean, she saw… What?"   
He shook his head, again. "She seemed so changed…"   
Sighing, he sat at his computer, shrugging. "Maybe she's ill or something… Oh well…" He switched it on, yawning softly, and got back to reading the historical accounts of the end of Kharak that he'd been reading last night… 

………   


She shook under her cloak, on the shuttle, thinking, "Maybe this isn't such a good idea…"   
But she had already committed, no way to back away from this trip now. She was on a tourist ship that ran from Hiigara to various historical places. She knew what she was doing… She hoped…   
Then she saw it out the shuttle's ports, and it stole her breath away. The Mothership.   
She licked her lips, under her cloak's hood. A soft, bemused chuckle…   
"I'm acting like a girl who hasn't seen her lover for a year…" She smiled softly to herself. "But I have to…" 

The shuttle landed without incident, inside the massive bays. She smiled to herself… How many ships had she felt launched and docked there? It had been almost like what she felt giving birth would've felt like, except painless… She shook her head at her silly thoughts, as the debarking started.   
The tour took them through the massive bay, through the area where craft had been created and repaired.   
She knew it by heart. Every last inch… And she knew her chance.   
When they got to the Cryopod bays…   
It was a relatively simple prospect to hide behind a pod as the Tour proceeded onward, downward. She knew where they were going, and it was nowhere near where she wanted to go…   
She slid out of her cloak, and her clothes under it made her look like any other worker that might have been on the ship. They were few now, but they wouldn't spot her as anything but one of their own… She grinned softly to herself. "In the truest way, I am one of them…"   
She walked to the door, simply going part of the way, until she hit the restricted sections. Her heart skipped, as she touched the pad, and was admitted. "Easy as pie… My security clearance is the absolute highest in the Fleet…"   
She smiled softly to herself, feeling confidence and ease return to her body. Something that hadn't happened in a long time…   
She walked through the corridors with a briskness of purpose, a clarity of intent that made the two workers she passed certain she was moving on higher orders. In a way, she thought, she was… 

Then she reached a room…   
Coding open the massive, armored doors, that opened vertically, she walked in, looking around the muted green room, dangling wires… Just as she remembered it.   
Walking over to the suspended ring in the center she had sat on, she gently ran a bare, smooth hand over it's equally smooth metal surface.   
She let words slip from her lips. "Fleet Command Online…" 

Then a familiar voice from behind her. "I thought I'd find you here, Karan…"   
She felt her blood pressure spike, a startle in her body, as she whirled, sighting the young man, cockily standing inside the door, hand on hip… "TARO!"   



	2. TARO!

The boy snickered softly, standing in his bright blue and yellow suit. "Don't look so surprised, Sala… Or should I say, Karan Sjet." He made a rather ludicrous imitation of a low, sweeping bow. "Did you really think I'd forget a friend acting weird? 

Her brows furrowed. Horror, and anger, swirled inside her. "How the HELL did you get in here?!"   
Another snicker. "Oh come on. You know me. I'm the best hacker on Hiigara."   
Her eyes rolled. "Of course you are. One day, most likely today, that's going to get you into a deep load of trouble." 

A bare flicker in his eyes of a tiny ounce of fear. Then he smiled again. "You wouldn't do that to me, would you?… I only followed you because I thought you were hurting."   
She tried to affix a murderous glare to her face, but it fell flat. "No… Why did you think I was hurt?"   
The cockiness slid off him like water from a swimmer. "Because you were acting so very off… You looked ill, and lonely. Longing for something… It hit me that day you wouldn't let me in your apartment. There was something way off with that… Then I went back to my home, kept watching some history I'd been reading, and… Bam. There was your face, bright and shiny in the Hall of Elders, pitching your speech to let them chop your spine up. What's wrong?"   
Her eyes closed. "I don't know… I…" She sighed, and sat on the back of the steel ring. "I haven't felt comfortable since we got here… I've been… It feels so strange, lonely, on the ground…" 

This time, it was Taro's turn to furrow his brows. "Why? You were around tons of people."   
She shook her head, and patted the ring beside her. Taro hesitated, but then he thought, "What the hell." And sat on it. "So, why were you lonely?"   
Karan closed her eyes. "You don't understand… Nobody can, nobody can understand what I was… Fleet Command. I was never alone. Never alone. Never asleep… There was always someone to talk to, someone to make sure was okay… I was always scanning the inside of the ship, the ships out there… It was…" she sighed again, opening her eyes. "It was like being a Goddess, in a way. I could see everyone, hear everyone speak. I knew how they were doing, if they were scared, angry, sad… I saw everyone who ever flew… I saw them die, I saw those who lived shouting in joy when we orbited Hiigara… How, HOW, could I not be lonely… And I was uncomfortable on the surface…" She closed her eyes. "Seal door, lock."   
Taro jumped, when the door slid into place, the shimmer of electricity visible between it's cracks indicating the electro-mag seal was on.   
"Listen…" she said, in complete darkness. "Can you hear it?"   
Taro was breathing rapidly now. "Hear what?"   
She smiled to herself. "Stop breathing so loud… Can you hear it? The howling steel of her? The Mothership? Can you feel the throb of her drive's on standby, the hum of the power plants?"   
She chuckled softly. "Maybe you won't be able to… But I can… Even if I'm not… part of her now…"   
Taro forced his heart to slow, but shook his head. "All I can hear is our breathing." 

She nodded at this, and held her breath, putting her hand over his mouth and nose. "Now?"   
Taro concentrated… He did feel a vibration… He could almost hear, screaming, the howling silence now prevalent in the room… He pushed her soft hand away, with some admitted reluctance, and let out his breath before speaking again, "Yeah… Yeah, I can."   
"Imagine feeling it, hearing it, experiencing it… For two whole months. There are twenty-four hours in a day, thirty days to a month. Sixty minutes to an hour, sixty seconds to a minute… one-thousand, four-hundred-forty some odd hours… Straight. Eighty-six thousand, four-hundred minutes. Five-million, one-hundred and eighty-four thousand seconds… Awake. All of that, awake, feeling, experiencing her… 

"Ummm. Sa.. err, Karan… You're… You're calling the Mothership her… And it doesn't seem in the casual way that people usually refer to ships…"   
Karan laughed, joyfully, at him. "Yes, I know… Mmmm.. You may think it's weird, but… I know this ship more intimately than any worker who ever worked on her, more intimately than a lover knows her lover's body… Every last deck plate, every seal, every control… I WAS her… I was this ship's soul…"   
Taro blinked. "Umm… Yeah, you were, weren't you… Heh… Ummm… Do you remember me?"   
Karan blinked. "Let me think…" Her mind swirled, recalling memories distant… She didn't have the sort of eidetic memory usually referred to when someone had perfect memory, but everything she had ever experianced as Fleet Command was permanently etched into her mind, her heart and soul, and she could see it as clearly as if she were re-living it. 

"Cryo-tray section D, Tray four, Rack Seven, pod forty-five. Taro Sjet. Yes, I remember… I can remember looking in on you… I did that, I looked at everyone in the trays at least twice…" She reached over, laying a hand on his cheek. "I remember I thought you were cute… You had an absolutely angelic face, asleep… with none of the sassy attitude of you awake."   
This served the desired effect, as both Taro and she broke into laughed. 

Then a loud buzzing issued from the lock. 

"What? Lights!." The room's pale lights flooded it in light that was easily accepted by eyes that had been used to the dark, as she strode over to the lock. "Someone's trying to override my lock. They seem to be agitated, because the security override isn't enough… Of course it's not enough to override Fleet Command's lock." She shook her head, uncoding it.   
And found herself staring down the barrel of an MP and his gun.   
"Okay, whomever-the-hell-you-two-wise-asses think you are, hands above your heads! This is a restricted section." 

Karan blinked, and stared him cold in his eyes. "What do you think you're doing?"   
The rough and tumble sort of man muttered back. "Arresting you, smart-ass lady. On the ground, NOW!"   
He pointed his gun directly at her.   
Clearing her throat, and noticing out of the corner of her eyes that Taro was stock-still, shaking slightly – in fear or rage, she coulden't tell, she spoke again. "Guard, I outrank you by several orders of magnitude. Put your gun down. Now."   
"Hah-Hah. Yeah, right. And I suppose you're gonna tell me you're Karan-fricking-Sjet, next. Very funny. On the ground. NOW!"   
She cleared her throat, starting to speak, but he prodded her right below the chest with his gun. Seeing that talk wasn't going to get out of this, she nodded, and put her hands up, slowly sliding spread-eagle to the ground. "Taro, do what he says… Fighting our own won't gain us any." 

She said this, to stave off the impending act of rashness she knew was about to happen, as Taro muttered, but slid to the ground similarly, spread-eagle.   
The guard quickly put restraints on both of them, and after patting them down for weapons, hauled them up by the restraints. "Okay now. We're goin' to the Security station while I call FleetSec to see what we're going to do with you two." 

……… 

"Okay, A young, punk Sala Soban, is it? And a young, punk Sjet named Taro… I've just called the FleetSec commander. He seems to be… annoyed with you two… I suspect this'll mean a long, long prison sentence for both of you… I don't know what the hell you thought you were doing in that room, but you're gonna pay. 

Karan rolled her eyes. "I told you who I am. I gave you my clearance number. Check it." 

"Har-dee-har. No way that no how that two kids like you would have sufficient Clearance to get into that room, so there's no reason to even bother. MY security pass won't get me in there, and I'm listed as 'cleared for everywhere. So why don't I just toss the two of you into a tank, and we'll just have a wait for an hour or so for the Admiral to get here. He seems to be taking this… personally." 

Karan sighed, muttering under her breath, as Taro growled at the guard. "Yeah yeah, I've heard it all before, punk, so you don't need to inform me how you can kick my ass. I guarantee, I can kick yours faster'n'harder'n you can kick mine." 

He uncoded two of the brig tanks, tossing them both into the rooms roughly. "Now just sit tight…" 

……… 

Fifty minutes later…   
Karan looked out of the tiny window in the room, as she saw a door outside opening. In strode a fairly old, fit man. She recognized him. Malice, a small, petty feeling of the soon-to-be-delivered dressing down to the Guard swirled in her. A small, predatory smile crossed her lips. She wasn't usually vicious, but she didn't like being held at gunpoint by someone who should've snapped to and begged for forgiveness the moment he saw her, either.   
The two were talking, but the soundproofing made what she said unintelligible. Then they moved towards her door, and she stood back, as it uncoded.   
Working up as much dignity as she could muster, she smiled sweetly as the door opened. "Admiral Yalen Soban. What an unexpected delight to see you again. Tell me, are you underlings always this rude?" 

The old man blinked.   
Once. Twice. Three times.   
Then he turned to the guard, took the guard's Master, and snapped it in half, followed by his rank tab, and then he confiscated the man's gun.   
He stepped in, uncoding Karan's restraints, and said, "Now, ENSIGN Slar, please explain to Fleet Command just why you held her in irons for an hour and a half…"   
The guard fell over backwards in a dead faint, affording Karan another laugh.   
"Thanks, Admiral. It's good to see you again. I'd love to chat, but could you please get my friend out of irons, too? He's in the number two tank.   
The Admiral saluted, and said "Of course… Although I am curious as to why you're back here, I'll do as you order immediately."   


……… 

Twenty minutes later, on the Bridge.   
"So you wanted to come back… I understand that, although why you brought someone else puzzles me, but why you wanted to come back is even more curious…"   
Karan shrugged. "It's… Really a long, complicated reason. Suffice it to say I wanted to be back onboard for a while…"   
The Admiral shrugged, but nodded. "Of course… Well, it's your right, you ARE still Fleet Command. Ahh, I need to get back to the Carrier Raindancer… Do you need me for anything?"   
Karan smiled softly. "Just tell your guards that if a security clearance code IS provided by a suspect, to RUN it before throwing them in a tank."   
The admiral actually blushed at this. "I am so terribly sorry for Ensign Slar's actions… I can't begin to apologize enough. I promise you, he'll be mopping decks tomorrow."   
Karan shook her head, and said "That's not necessary, but okay. You can go do what you need to do, I'll get myself and my friend home fine."   
The admiral nodded. "Of course. If you need to send for a pilot and shuttle, the comm systems are right there."   
The admiral stood, saluted again, and left.   
"That was… interesting… I've never been held at gunpoint before." 

She laughed at her friend. "I can't say I've been either. Ahh well…" She sighed, looking out at the stars through the massive viewport.   
And felt his hand gently fold over hers. "You are home, aren't you…"   
She sighed, then nodded. "Yes… I… I feel comfortable again here. I know her so very well…"   
Taro smiled softly. "You know, it's mildly creepy the way you refer to this ship like a lover… But it's less so than when you first did… I think I understand…"   
She smiled softly back, and gently pulled him close. They were so very alike in build, she thought, sandy, desert-wind hair, the signature blue eyes of Kiith Sjet, same height… She smiled into his eyes, and on an impulse, gave him a light kiss.   
This had the effect of making him go straight as a soldier, as if receiving an electric jolt. And she found this so funny as to giggle.   
"Y-Y-Y-Y-You…"   
Smiling, she gently stroked his hair. "Yes, I just kissed you. Because you've been the only friend I had, since… Since then…"   
She sighed softly, thinking of Kharak.   
"Funny, isn't it? We came here to a world of crystal-clear blue oceans, freshwater oceans, wonderful sky, food in plenty… And when I'm not missing the Mothership… I miss Kharak."   
Taro sighed softly, putting his arm around her. "I know what you mean… In every way I can think of, Hiigara is a virtual paradise compared to Kharak, yet… I miss the sun, the sand…" He sighed.   
"Ahh well… I…" She closed her eyes, and smiled softly, gently kissing him again. Slower this time."   
When it broke, he half-lidded his eyes, and gently turned to face her, pulling her into an embrace. "Karan Sjet, are you coming onto me?"   
She smiled softly, pressing herself against him. "And what if I am… Do you want me?"   
He looked up into her eyes, and licked his lips. She was certainly the most attractive girl who'd ever shown any attention or friendship towards him…   
And he smiled. "Of course…" He smiled softly… As she squeezed him, and he her…" 

(Well, heh. Chapter 2… Like? I know I do…)   



End file.
